1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to expert methods and systems for providing customer relations information via the Internet, an interactive automated response system, or an automated expert system accessed by a user.
2. Background of the Technology
Customers of service providers, such as lenders or other financial service providers, frequently inquire about their services, including changes in cost, fee structure, and benefits, for example. Inquiries cover a broad range of issues and may be extremely complex. In the financial lending industry, topics include, for example, current status of rates and balances, changes in rates, financial strategies, and general requests for information. For instance, a customer may inquire about the increase in an adjustable mortgage rate, the maximum rate of the mortgage, and the trends observed in the market.
The customer relations departments of service providers typically are trained to respond to a variety of customer inquiries. However, often customer inquiries exceed the expertise of customer relations agents. Moreover, customer relations agents have the difficult, and sometimes impossible, task of identifying, researching, and solving every issue posed by the customer. As a result, customers may not receive informative, responsive, or complete answers to their inquiries. Even in those cases in which agents properly provide information to customers, often the information is not delivered in a timely manner.
It is well known in the field that customer relations agents may rely on prepared texts or electronic repositories for answers to customer questions. However, these resources are typically cumbersome, inefficient, and time-consuming to research.
There remains an unmet need for service providers, such as financial lenders, to assess efficiently customer issues, and then subsequently answer them completely, accurately, and consistently. Further, there is an unmet need for methods and systems for consistently documenting the results of a conversation with a customer and for providing supporting information to allow an action to be taken by a customer relations agent in a predetermined format. Additionally, there is an unmet need for methods and systems for some customers to avoid agents and directly access personal information to answer, address, and resolve questions and issues.
There thus remains a general unmet need for an expert method and system for providing customer relations information that can assess and deliver comprehensive and responsive information to the customer in a timely and cost-effective manner.